DevRel, Donuts & Distributed Systems: Dan McKinney on Scaling Cloudsmith and Winning Trust

#002: In this episode of DevEx Unpacked, Alan Carson sits down with Dan McKinney, one of Cloudsmith’s earliest team members and now Head of Solutions Engineering. Dan reflects on his unique journey from writing docs and filming DevRel videos to leading high-stakes enterprise sales. Discover how Cloudsmith scaled from a two-person start-up to a platform trusted by global enterprises, why software supply chain security is more urgent than ever, and what features make developers and security teams lean in. Bonus: hear the Pac-Man showdown story and why a black "Alan" T-shirt sums up start-up confidence. 00:00:00 Donuts, Documentation & Day One: How Dan Joined Cloudsmith00:06:00 DevRel Origins and “Hi, Dan from Cloudsmith”00:09:45 Pac-Man Rivalries & Retro Tech: Culture and Camaraderie00:11:30 Crawling Through Ceilings: Building Infrastructure from Scratch00:14:45 Early Belief in a Bold Vision: Betting on Artefact Management00:18:00 From Customer Support to Solutions Engineering00:21:00 Why Enterprises Are Rethinking Software Supply Chain Security00:30:00 From Startups to Fortune 500s: The Enterprise Evolution00:36:45 Every Toolchain Is Unique: The Complexity Cloudsmith Solves00:39:55 Lean-In Features: What Customers Love About the Platform00:46:00 People + Product: What Dan Loves Most About Cloudsmith00:48:40 The “Alan” T-Shirt and the Power of Staying the Course